The longhouse was not as Fenris remembered it. The scent in the air, the same as it had been the day he was born within these walls, had changed. It was no longer the comforting scent of old smoke and cured pelts or the yeasty fragrance of brewing barrels. In its place hung the sharper, salt-tinged odor of dried fish and fermentation, and the strange, pungent incense that smoldered in a large brass wolf-head by the high throne—scents of the river coast brought up to the mountain rock, foreign and imposing.
The light was different, too; which had been a subtler change. The firepit’s glow had once alone softened the vast space, now long torches guttered in iron sconces along the walls and cast a harder, more erratic light that carved deep shadows into the faces of the many Deep Water wolves who lounged about in the front hall. Their eyes followed him, glinting like chips of wet amber stone.
And along the walls, where the tapestries of Black Rock had once hung, new ones had usurped them. In their place hung tapestries depicting the history of Deep Water.
His steps slowed; to his right, a massive hanging depicted a brutal, swirling battle on a rocky shore. Wolves in hybrid form, teeth bared and claws extended, tore into a line of human men in leather jerkins and iron caps. The river behind them was a tumult of gray and green thread, storm-tossed and cruel. Another to his left showed a scene of grim triumph: a vast, silver-scaled catch of fish, each one longer than a man, spilling from woven nets onto a stony beach. Wolves stood amidst the haul, their postures weary but their woven eyes fierce with relief.
The largest tapestry, hanging directly behind Hroth’s seat, told the story of the Sundering. Hrolfr the Cruel, rendered in threads of iron-grey and frost-white, stood at the forefront of a column of determined wolves. Behind them, fading into misty threads of blue and black, was the silhouette of Black Rock’s peak. Before them, woven in brilliant, daunting blues, stretched the endless, churning Deep River. It was their exodus; their self-righteous turning of backs. It made Fenris scowl.
It struck him then how little he had truly seen the tapestries in all his years, though surely his eyes had landed them on hundreds of times throughout his life. They had been as much a part of the longhouse as the smoke-blackened rafters or the packed-earth floor. They’d been a background atmosphere, the woven exterior skin of the hall itself. He had been birthed before them, walked beneath them, eaten before them and had taken their presence for granted the way a child takes the sky. But now, with them gone, their ghosts screamed from the bare walls; and it had felt as wrong as if the sky itself had disappeared.
His eyes traced the space with a scavenger’s precision, and memory rushed in with shocking, painful clarity. There, above the smithy bench where old Jorik had mended knives for the slave cooks, the vibrant weaving of the First Hunt Under the Blood Moon had once hung; the wolves, rendered in threads of russet and shadow, flowing like a dark river beneath a crimson-stained sky; the great elk at the center, its antlers a tapestry of terror and triumph. There, by the main door where the draft would linger, the playful, faded depiction of the Wolf-Mother Teaching Her Cubs to Sing to the Stars; the she-wolf’s head, thrown back in a silent, woven howl, her pups around her with comically earnest, stitched-open mouths aimed at a sky dotted with silver thread.
And there, in the place of highest honor to the right of the Alpha’s seat… that space was now a wound. The timber behind it was a darker, richer brown, shielded from decades of light and smoke by the grand tapestry that should have been there. The Tapestry of the Great Father. He could feel its absence like a missing tooth with his tongue. The immense wolf had had a pelt made from a magnificent storm of blonde, brown, and ink-black, standing its silent vigil on a stony crag. Its ice-blue eyes forever watched the Deep River’s course, a thin thread of blue at the bottom of the mountain. Little was known of the Great Father, he was not mentioned in the Old Stories; some even whisper that he had not existed at all, and the Great Mother had alone conceived them. They weren’t sure, beyond a reasonable doubt, who it had been that made the tapestry in the first place. But it had been a silent patriarch overlooking generations of Black Rock’s Alphas for hundreds of years and nobody was going to take it down.
Except Hroth, of course. Fenris felt a bile working up his throat.
“What have you done here, Hroth?” Fenris said, his voice carrying a taste of the snarl he could feel wanting to release from his chest.
Hroth, who had been observing his inspection with a faint, unreadable smile, took a sip from the drinking horn he’d picked up earlier from the hand of one of his sleeping wolves, “A man should be surrounded by the deeds of his own blood, you must agree,” he replied, his voice like gravel rolling in a tide. “The whispers of another’s ancestors become… overstimulating.”
“What have you done with them? With my tapestries.”
Hroth gestured idly with his horn. “I cannot say for sure, a couple of the slaves did away with them. I’d told them to burn em’ all but I fear they might be as soft with sentiment for them as you. I am willing to bet they’ve preserved them, but would only lie if asked.” He took another drink, his eyes never leaving Fenris’s. “Others… well, I took it upon myself to burn. They were rotted threads. Faded glory.”
A cold fury, sharp as a winter wind, tightened in Fenris’s gut. He kept his face a mask of stone. “The Tapestry of the Great Father,” he said, each word measured. “The one that hung there.” He nodded to the blank, dark space on the wall beside the high throne.
Hroth’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Ah, that one.” He set his horn down on the last long table in the room. “Yes, I do apologize, Fenris, it was the first one I threw into the flames.” He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a confiding tone that was anything but kind. “It reminded me too much of my father. The resemblance was… uncanny. And I have little use for ghosts, especially his.”
Fenris said nothing. He let the cold fury settle into a hard, permanent knot beneath his ribs, another ghost to be avenged.
Something is not right Albi sent to him, and Fenris could see in her mind that it had nothing to do with the redecorating. In the hall around them, the long tables were naked of trenchers, the benches pushed back, the hearth dark but for a few sullen embers. The air smelled of cold ash and abandonment, not the thick, yeasty musk of a night-feast.
Only a few slaves floated about, like ghosts along the walls, and they carried nothing in their hands. They did not meet his eyes, but their gazes did fall upon Albi. In their tired glances he could see the flickered sparks of longing, the recognition of a ghost returned. Albi nodded to them, a small, gentle movement, acknowledging their shared silence. In her mind, Fenris saw she was thinking of the conversation she had had with Jorik. He tasted the metallic sadness of sorrow and defeat in her mouth.
They’d believed I would save them. Albi thought, to herself or to him, he didn’t know. She did not want a reply, in any case.
“What trickery is this, Hroth?” Fenris asked, his voice low, “you ask us to dine and talk. There is no meal prepared here.”
Hroth turned on his heel and did not stop, forcing them to keep pace behind him. He walked past the empty high seat, past the cold hearth, his boots ringing loud against the floorboards. He went to a narrow door set into the far wall, a portal Fenris knew led down to the storage cellars.
Hroth paused. From the pocket of his tunic he produced a single key, carved from dark wood, worn smooth by years of handling. He did not look back as he fit it to the iron lock on the cellar door.
"When your pack asks what it is we did here tonight," Hroth said, his voice echoing in the stone throat beyond the door, "that is what you will tell them. We ate a night meal together. We spoke of….of tapestries, of idle, boring things. You will not speak of what I am about to show you."
He pushed the door open. A breath of cold, damp air rushed out, carrying the scent of wet earth and old stone. Hroth took a lantern from a peg beside the frame—unlit, heavy with rust—and struck a flint. The flame caught, casting his face in jaundiced light and deep shadow. He began the descent, his bulk moving with surprising grace down the narrow stairs. Fenris followed, though he had half a mind to turn back and leave. Albi steadied herself behind him with a hand on his back.
The stairs were steep, cut from the living rock of the mountain, worn concave by generations of feet. The walls sweated moisture, beaded and glistening in the lantern light. Roots from long felled trees twisted through the mortar like the fingers of buried giants, pale and thick. The air grew colder with each step, heavy with the fungal scent of decay and the iron tang of old wine lees. It was a place of secrets, a womb of stone beneath the world.
At the bottom, the cellar opened into a cavernous space. Barrels lined the walls like sleeping soldiers, and in the corners lay piles of turnips and onions, soft with rot. The darkness pooled thick, resisting the lantern’s weak glow. Hroth moved through it like a fish along the river floor, unhurried, certain of his path.
He led them to the far end, where a second door stood; a door of heavy oak bound ominously with black iron. Above it, a rusted hook protruded from the stone. Hroth hung the lantern there, the light swinging, sending their shadows dancing grotesque and long across the rough walls. Again, he produced the wooden key. The lock turned with a sound like a bone cracking.
He heaved the door open.
The room beyond was small, barely large enough for three shouldered men. It had been cleared of the barrels and sacks that once filled it. Now, upon the cold stone floor, lay a pile of thick furs. A large drinking bowl sat beside them, carved from dark wood, rimmed with silver that caught the lantern light. Beside it, a plate of untouched food: cold venison, hard cheese, a crust of bread going stale with age.
And slumped against the wall in the far corner, so small Fenris had missed it with his first glance, was a woman.
She was dressed in rough-woven wool and leather—practical clothes, stained with travel and mud. Her face was strong and defiant in her restless sleep, with high cheekbones, a jaw like a cleaver, and skin the color of browned bread. Her hair was black as pitch, braided in thick ropes that fell across her shoulders. She breathed shallowly, her head lolling to the side, unconscious.
Fenris stepped closer, his nostrils flaring. He smelled the road on her; what he didn’t smell was wolf. She was human. Entirely, purely human.
It was Albi who broke the silence, her voice barely a whisper in the stone chamber.
"She is a wolf-hunter."
Albi turned her gaze to Hroth, seeking confirmation in those pale, glacial eyes.
Hroth nodded. He reached again into his pocket and withdrew his rolled leaf, lighting it from the lantern flame. He inhaled deeply, the ember glowing red, and exhaled a plume of smoke that curled toward the ceiling like a spirit leaving a body.
"That she is, sister," Hroth said, his voice conversational, as if discussing the weather. He looked down at the sleeping woman with an expression Fenris could not read—tenderness, perhaps, or hunger. "But that is not the only aggravating part of this."
He paused, dragging again on the smoke, his ice-blue eyes finding Fenris’s in the dim light.
"The wolf-hunter and I," Hroth said, the words falling like stones into still water, "have Imprinted. And I have brought you both here so that you may kill her for me.”
The silence that followed was absolute, a heavy thing that pressed against the eardrums. Fenris felt the shock resonate through two bodies at once—his own, rigid with disbelief, and Albi's, which struck him through their bond.
But Albi's shock curdled quickly into suspicion. It was a cold, calculating thing, a frost spreading across the surface of a pond. She stepped forward, her shadow falling across the threshold and darkening the woman's slack features. The hunter's chest rose and fell in shallow, drugged rhythms, oblivious to the death sentence being discussed above her.
"If there were a way to prove it to you, I would," Hroth said, his voice tight. He dragged his gaze from the woman to Albi, nostrils flaring. "I can smell the doubt on you, Sister. It reeks of stupidity."
Albi's chuckle was low, devoid of humor. She leaned closer, her honey-smoke eyes glinting in the lantern light. "There is a way to prove it."
She moved before either man could react. In a blur of silver hair and pale skin, Albi crossed the small space and dropped to her knees beside the sleeping woman. Her hand, slender and strong, wrapped around the hunter's throat and squeezed.
Fenris started forward to stop her, but Albi's voice cut through his mind like a wire.
Trust me. She asked of him; and he did.
The woman woke not gradually, but with a violent spasm. Her eyes snapped open—dark, confused, flooded with panic. She clawed at Albi's fingers, her nails raking red lines across Albi's knuckles, but her movements were sluggish, uncoordinated. She was drugged, and not truly awake. She kicked out, her boots scraping against the stone, and a soft, gasping plea escaped her lips—a wet, desperate sound that was barely words at all.
Fenris turned his gaze to Hroth.
The Alpha of Skoltha stood frozen, the rolled leaf forgotten in his fingers. At first, his expression was one of bored detachment, the mask of a man observing a tedious spectacle. But as the woman's struggles intensified, as her face purpled and her gasps grew more frantic, a crack appeared in the stone. A sheen of sweat broke across Hroth's forehead, sudden and profuse, glistening in the dim light. His breathing quickened, shallow and sharp, as if it were his own throat being crushed. The color drained from his face, leaving his pale skin the grey of old parchment.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He was feeling it. Every constriction of her airway, every desperate beat of her heart—he was feeling it through the Imprint.
The woman's struggles weakened. Her hands fell away from Albi's wrists, her fingers twitching against the furs. A final, whispered plea escaped her lips, a sound like a breaking reed, saying Hroth’s name.
That was what broke him.
Hroth lunged forward with a snarl that was more wolf than man, his lips peeling back from his teeth. But Fenris was faster. He caught Hroth by the shoulders and slammed him back against the cold stone wall with a force that shook dust from the ceiling. Hroth thrashed, his eyes wild and unfocused, his hands clawing at Fenris's arms—not to fight the man holding him, but to reach the woman on the floor.
I’ll be damned, Albi's thought came, cool and precise as she released the hunter’s throat, seconds before death was to come to her, Hroth is not lying.
The woman collapsed back into the furs, her head lolling to the side, her breath returning in ragged, wheezing gulps before settling once more into the deep rhythm of unnatural sleep.
Hroth sagged against the wall. Fenris released him now too, stepping back, watching as the Alpha slid to the floor, his chest heaving. Sweat darkened the golden hair at his temples, ran in rivulets down his scarred face. He looked undone, stripped of his royal bearing, his eyes fixed on the woman with a terrible, helpless hunger.
"Did you have fun, Sister?" Hroth spat, his voice shredded. He wiped at his face with a trembling hand. "Was it amusing to see me unravel at the seams?"
Albi rose, her expression serene, almost beatific. She smoothed her tunic and looked down at him with a smile that held no warmth. Through the bond, Fenris felt the cold, hard satisfaction radiating from her. This was justice, she was thinking. This was leverage.
Fenris understood then, reading her thoughts as clearly as if they were his own. This woman—this human hunter—was the only creature in all of Skoltha, perhaps in all the world, that Hroth could not kill. The Imprint was a chain, and Albi would use it to end him.
"I don't understand, Hroth," Fenris said aloud, his voice filling the small space. He looked from the sleeping woman to the shattered Alpha slumped against the wall. "Why do you wish for us to kill her? This is a blessing from the Great Mother. This is confirmation that the Imprint is returning to our kind. You are stronger with her, and you are weaker without. Was it not you who told me that the death of an Imprinted mate would weaken a wolf-man forever? Perhaps I might take advantage of your weakness now, the way you once had mine."
Hroth laughed, a harsh, broken sound. He fumbled for his flint, relighting the crushed rolled leaf with shaking fingers. He inhaled deeply, the smoke trembling as it left his lips.
"Aye, it was." He laughed again, nearly choking. "But you and I know my wolves would tear all of Black Rock apart should you try to kill me unjustly. Aye, I’ll be weak, but it will not be forever; I figure it’ll take me a moon’s turn to get its poison out of me, with the healer’s tonics. A suffering I am willing to endure. This Imprint is a vile, sick thing. Look at what it has done to me—enslaved me to the pitiful sensations of this... this weak creature."
"She will Change," Albi said. It was not a question, “and she will be strong.”
Fenris nodded, his eyes never leaving Hroth's face. "The woman will not be human for long. She will have her First Change, if she survives it. You have drugged her."
Hroth dragged in another lungful of smoke, his head falling back against the stone. "That I have."
"It was not wise," Fenris said quietly. "The drugs will make her senses slow and her Change dangerous. She may not survive the transition if her mind is clouded. You might get your wish without us, Hroth."
"I do not wish for her to Change, and I do not wish for her to survive," Hroth said, his voice flat, exhausted. "I do not wish for her to wake. I want this... gone."
The lantern’s feeble glow carved Hroth’s face into a landscape of shadows and stubborn pride.
“I will not take the woman’s life,” Fenris said, the iron in his voice leaving no room for compromise, “And neither will Albi. To kill her would be to spit in the eye of the Great Mother herself. She blessed you with this woman’s blood-call. You do not murder a gift from the Mother, Hroth. However much I might wish to see you choke to death on your own pride, I fear Her wrath more than I could ever hate you.”
“There is also a leverage here,” Albi’s voice cut through their gloom, thinner than usual but sharp as a skinning knife. She moved to a low barrel and sat, a wave of dizziness visibly washing over her. Fenris felt it in his own gut—a sudden, lurching roll of nausea. He reached out, his hand finding the knotted tension at the nape of her neck. His thumb pressed into the corded muscle until he felt her stomach ease beneath his touch.
You did not eat, he sent through the bond.
I expected food here, this is a feast, if you remember. she returned, the thought brittle with fatigue and disdain.
Hroth is a bastard.
I know.
Leaning over her, Fenris plucked a small, hard apple from a basket shoved against the damp wall. He handed it to her, his fingers brushing hers, and placed a kiss on the crown of her sweat-damp hair. She polished the fruit on her tunic, the simple motion a defiance against the cellar’s grim desire to dust everything over.
“Leverage?” Hroth tilted his head, his eyes narrowing to slits in the lantern light.
“Was she important?” Albi asked, taking a decisive bite. The crisp sound was obscenely loud. “The huntress?”
“So I am told. As important as a human can be,” Hroth conceded, his tone dripping with a scorn that did not quite mask a flicker of unease. “Secil says she commanded a troop of her own. That her father is some knight of the King’s Guard. That is why they threw her in my cellar—she is a prized hostage. I planned to use her to negotiate; now I want her dead.”
“If we can gain her trust,” Albi explained around another bite, her voice gaining steadiness even as the pallor lingered in her cheeks, “and you can… strengthen your bond with her through this Imprint… she becomes more than a prisoner of war, Hroth. She becomes a key. She knows the hunters’ maps, their plans. That gives us a shield, for a time. More than that, she can speak to them. They know her face; they will trust her voice—and so will the King.”
“Aye, Sister,” Hroth sneered, pushing himself up from the floor with a pained grunt. “And how does she get within a league of the King without a silver bullet finding her eye? The moment those hunters see the amber fire in her gaze, they’ll know what she is. They’ll put her down like a mad dog and think it a mercy the huntress would want for herself, as if she is a thing possessed and mad and beyond return.”
“Wolf or not, they will not kill the daughter of a King’s Guard knight without the King looking upon her first,” Albi countered, her voice chillingly calm. “That would be a bullet through their own heads. And that moment—the moment he sees her, sees what she has become—is the moment we can change his mind. Make him see past the color of her eyes.”
“Pretty words from a knight’s wolf-tainted daughter will not end a war, Sister. It is a sweet little dream. It will die in the waking.” He took a long, wet drag from his leaf, the ember glowing in the dimness.
“That is why I will go with her.”
The words fell like a mason’s hammer on stone. The bond between them flared white-hot with Fenris’s violent, instant denial.
Absolutely not, he snarled into the privacy of her mind, the thought a whip-crack of pure fear.
Albi did not flinch. She did not even bother to look at him. Infuriating. Her gaze remained fixed on Hroth, her jaw set with that stubborn, granite hardness Fenris had come to dread.
“Absolutely not,” Hroth laughed, as though reading Fenris’s thoughts,“You are half the reason for this war, Princess. The whole kingdom wants your ‘safe return.’ You step beyond these trees, they will wrap you in silk and lock you in a tower, and every hunter from here to the Southern capital will boast of the victory. I forbid it. As your Alpha.”
“Thank you,” Fenris breathed, the relief a cold tide in his hot veins.
Albi finally looked at him. There was no relief in her eyes, only a hard, settled resolve. A decision made long before this moment, now simply being unveiled.
“I killed Obin, Hroth,” she said, her gaze cutting between them. Her voice was calm as a frozen lake, deceptively still. “If one half of this war is the King’s vengeance for his son, it is done. I will deliver that news to him. And the other half, as you say, well, he will see I am alive and that will settle it. He will not keep me as prisoner, Hroth, for the sake of his son he will not. And I will speak of Fenris. Of Black Rock. He will know that my wolves are not the monsters of his stories.” a ghost of a smirk touched her lips, “and with your mate—”
“Do not call her that,” Hroth growled, the words a physical blow in the confined space.
“—along with me,” Albi continued, unfazed, “the King has surety. If we agree to a satt, he knows it will be upheld by those he can trust. He knows my word is true. Her father knows hers. We do not come to him as wolves or strangers. We come as daughters of his kingdom. Two witnesses are better than one. She will have the witnessed trust of the hunters. I will have the witnessed trust of the people. The King can make such a peace without looking weak to every hersir who thirsts for wolf-blood.”
“And what do we offer this king of yours, my clever sister?” Hroth asked, his voice a low rumble. “You will not stay. His vengeance is already served by your hand. What prize do we give him that is sweeter than our bones bleaching in his forest?”
Through the bond, Fenris saw the smile in her mind—cold, cunning, as sharp as a winter fox’s. Her face, however, remained an impassive mask.
“The Deep River,” she said. “We keep to the northern bank. They take the southern. A border of water. We do not cross; they do not cross.”
“What else?” Hroth said, exhaling a plume of acrid smoke. He had heard the sly undertone, the unspoken ‘and.’
“And we release every human slave in Skoltha.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke to death on. Hroth stared, his smoke forgotten between his fingers.
“Albi–” Fenris began, the scale, the madness, the impossibility of it dawning on him.
You are mad, Albi.
“They are hostages from the riverland settlements your wolves have raided for generations,” Albi pressed, her voice gaining a relentless, practical rhythm. “They have mothers, fathers, lovers in the south who likely support this war in the hope of their return. Freeing them is not just mercy, Hroth. It is a lever. It makes the King look powerful—a victory sung in southern taverns for years. It robs his hersirs of a grievance. And it robs us of a burden.”
“A burden?” Hroth’s expression was as twisted as Fenris’s gut had become, “They are hands. They till fields we do not want to, they mend clothes we tear, they cook the food we hunt. They nurse our young. Their backs bear the entire weight of our comfort. To let them go…” He shook his head, the ingrained reality of generations of tradition warring with her cold logic. “The pack will not stomach it. They will see worse than surrender.”
“Then ask them,” Albi shot back, her eyes blazing now, “if they would rather send their own sons to die on southern pikes instead. Ask the mothers if they would rather weep over their mates’ corpses than share a harvest with free men and women. It is not a choice between keeping slaves and keeping pride. It is the choice between a difficult peace and a war that will drown Skoltha in silver until not a single pup is left to howl. Are you wolves so weak you cannot stand on your feet without the shock-brace of a human's back? Will you die for the very creatures you call weak and lowly?”
Fenris saw it then, clear as spring meltwater in her thoughts. This was not merely a gambit for peace. This was the completion of the mission that had been stolen from her—the mission she had begun before Hroth had put an early end to it.
It was justice for her people.
Hroth laughed then, a raw, tearing sound that bubbled up from his chest until wetness glistened in the corners of his eyes. He wiped at them with the heel of his hand, his shoulders shaking with the force of it. Then, with a final, wet drag, he flicked the smoldering end of his leaf to the stone floor and ground it beneath his boot heel.
“I will kill the huntress myself, Albiana,” he said, his voice suddenly hollow, all the fight gone out of it, replaced by a bleak, exhausted finality. “You may both leave.”
Albi nodded once, a sharp, accepting jerk of her chin. She stood, taking Fenris’s hand in hers—her grip was iron, colder than the cellar air—and turned toward the stairs. They took two steps, their shadows stretching long and grotesque behind them.
“Wait.”
Hroth’s voice cracked like a whip in the silence. They stopped, but did not turn.
“Fenris. You will make a public display,” he said, the words dragged from him. “Of your support for my Alpha-ship. I know your wolves heed your whisper more than my shout. I have heard the… ambitious ideas in their tavern cups. Stand before them. Show them you have no designs on my throne. Swear it. And I will support the terms of this… satt”
“You are in no position to make demands,” Albi snarled over her shoulder, not turning. “And your own wolves may tear you apart for the ‘weakness’ of your Imprint, anyway. May it be best if we wait and see–”
“I do not want division in Black Rock again,” Fenris decided heavily, turning slowly to face Hroth. The Alpha looked older in the guttering light, the deep lines in his pale face looking as deep as cracks in dried mud. “If a public oath is the price, you will have it. But the huntress lives. You will not harm her. And you will declare your Imprint publicly for me. You will take her as your sworn mate before both packs. And you will show them—show everyone—that an Alpha’s bond to a human is not a curse. And might it be that our people will see two Alpha’s united and remember how to be brothers again.”
“It will not go over well,” Hroth whispered, shaking his head. He looked not at Fenris, but at the damp wall, as if seeing the furious, confused faces of his own people. “I cannot guarantee it will be allowed to happen. I don’t mean the announcing of my… mate.” He spat the word. “I mean the slaves. Letting them go. It is the way of things. It is our way.”
“Then tell them to prepare their pyres,” Fenris said, his voice low and deadly. “Tell them to sharpen the knives for their own children’s throats. That is the other way. That is the way of pride. It is the humans or it is us, Hroth. There is no third path. This is the ground we stand on now. Do we have an understanding?” Fenris stepped closer, holding his arm out, forearm to forearm, in the warrior’s grip.
Hroth looked at the offered arm as if it were a viper coming to sink its fangs. His face had gone several shades paler, ghost-like in the lantern’s flame. Finally, with a sound that was half sigh, he reached out and grasped Fenris’s arm. His grip was strong, but it was the strength of a drowning man clinging to a rock out the water and nothing more.
“Do I have any other choice, brother?” he asked, the words barely a breath.
Fenris held the grip, feeling the tremble in the other man’s arm, the weight of the impossible choice now shackled to them both. “No, brother,” he said quietly with a cheeky grin. “You do not.”
